Automation for goods and services has reached record levels in society. Examples are everywhere from online banking and purchasing to a wide-range of devices and physical appliances that include computing and networking capabilities, which were just wishful dreams only a decade ago. For the most part, these advances have occurred because of breakthroughs in hardware and wireless communications, which have allowed complex processing and network connectivity to be achieved in the smallest of physical devices, such as a smart phone, for relatively small cost and effort.
One business model that has not advanced to any significant degree is the restaurant industry. True, consumers can pre-order online, make reservations online, view menus online, and the like; but, the onsite physical experience associated with the meal has not advanced to any significant degree. This situation is not strictly tied to the restaurant experience as it can be said to be the case with just about any physical retail/entertainment establishment as well.
Consider for example consumer checkout experiences at retail/entertainment establishments. In typical restaurant and similar retail/entertainment environments, a paper check or bill of goods is used for purposes of requiring that the customer surrender his/her credit card, or for requiring that a merchant employee physically visit the customer with a portable payment terminal (popular at entertainment venues, such as concerts, sporting events, and the like). This arrangement is not necessarily optimal for a variety of reasons.
For instance, often a customer may be having an enjoyable experience at the establishment only to have the entire affair be tarnished when the waiter/agent goes on break after delivering the bill or gets too busy with other customers to timely attend to completing the payment transaction to the satisfaction of the customer. Additionally, providing a payment card to the waiter/agent poses a variety of security risks to the customer. For example, details of the payment card may be unscrupulously acquired by the waiter/agent or someone else that handles or has visual or physical access to the payment card after the customer surrenders it for payment. Security risks exists even if the card itself is not compromised by someone at the facility, since receipts are often printed and managed at the facility and the receipts may have confidential information that can be acquired by third-parties.
Even when the payment experience is automated by a facility with Near Field Communication (NFC), the facility must have a NFC-compatible payment terminal, which is inconvenient for the facility because of the hardware, software, and support expense associated with having NFC-enabled devices on site. Moreover, in order for the customer to use the NFC mechanism, the customer's smart phone has to have stored sensitive information on the customer's smart phone, such as: credit card numbers, loyalty numbers and so forth. Even the best software is still subject to potential hacking and compromise if the smart phone is acquired or if a remote connection can be made to the smart phone. Furthermore, typical mobile loyalty solutions rely on an operator to scan a mobile device or loyalty card at the time of a purchase for purposes of loading the loyalty information into the Point-Of-Sale (POS) system or the retail web site.